Daniel Faber, the CEO and co-founder of the Colorado-based startup (which was a finalist for TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield) has over 20 years of experience in the space industry. He is most known for having led Deep Space Industries (DSI), an organization focused on asteroid mining. The company has been operating since 2018. Seven years after it was created in 2012, Bradford Space purchased the business.

In a recent interview, he joked, "If you want [to talk about] something that's too early, that's it." In order to someday develop technology that might prospect a far-off asteroid, DSI constructed satellite thrusters for orbital manipulation. After doing this work and talking to colleagues and clients, Faber came to the conclusion that in-space refueling was the next big thing.

A portion of the problem may be solved with basic math: coworkers and past clients informed him that each additional kilogram of fuel might generate up to $1 million in more income from satellite flights.

"The amount of fuel that spacecraft have is optimized, and when they run out, an extra kilogram would give them a million dollars in marginal revenue," explained Faber. "We simply must do that because it adds so much value to our lives."

A few satellite maintenance businesses, such as Astroscale, also came into being in the 2010s. They are creating technologies for last-mile satellite delivery, space debris cleanup, and satellite life extension. These are referred to as "tow truck applications" by Faber, who also recognized that orbital petrol stations will someday be required to supplement this fleet.

Orbit Fab was thus created. The business successfully completed a $6 million seed round in its first year of operation thanks to investments from Bolt and Munich Re Ventures, the venture capital division of Munich Re Group, one of the largest insurers of satellites and rockets. The business completed a $28.5 million Series A financing round in 2023.

The goal of the startup's ambitious technology is to outfit client satellites with a refueling port—officially known as RAFTI, though Faber refers to it as a “gas cap”—while the hardware is still on Earth. The "Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface," or RAFTI, can also be used to refuel spacecraft before they take off. One of Orbit Fab's tankers might retrieve fuel from orbital depots and carry it directly to the customer's satellite for refueling when an RAFTI-equipped satellite runs out of propellant.

The corporation solely sells fuel and fueling ports; it stands to reason that fuel sales will provide the majority of revenue. According to Orbit Fab's website, up to 100 kilos of hydrazine delivered in geostationary orbit will cost $20 million.

since of the straightforward architecture, Orbit Fab took years to introduce the refueling port since it is crucial to get every piece of hardware just right. There are other factors to take into account, such as the cost to the customer compared to the possible marginal revenue from an extended stay in orbit, the effect of fuelling on the spacecraft of the customer, and the difficulty of creating a docking system that can simultaneously transfer propellant.

Aside from these difficulties, the corporation also needed to make sure that the component met the requirements set out by NASA, the Space Force, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in order to guarantee its dependability, safety, and resistance to the extreme conditions of space travel.

It wasn't cheap, according to Faber. "It took some time, but in the end, we have a sophisticated design that satisfies those specifications and exudes the simplicity that comes from well-executed design."

According to Faber, one of the largest changes since he founded the firm is the U.S. Space Force's establishment and the impact it has had on the space sector as a whole. In the end, Orbit Fab decided to focus a large portion of its efforts on meeting the Space Force's emerging requirements, since they were highly interested in orbital mobility to avoid space junk or make satellite rendezvous.

Later this year, the business expects the first RAFTIs to launch onto clients' satellites. As part of an agreement with the DOD to provide fuel in geostationary orbit by 2025, that will be followed by the launch of the first fuel shuttle the following year. This year, Orbit Fab hopes to sell 100 fueling ports, placing the RAFTI "on a decent percentage of satellites going to orbit," according to Faber. He also mentioned that Orbit Fab has another contract with an unidentified commercial client to provide “a significant quantity of fuel” in a few years.

Faber hinted that the business has plans to enhance RAFTI and create variations that would be able to accommodate propellants with greater pressures in addition to these milestones. In the event that the market suggests it, the team is also considering rebuilding the grapple housing for bigger spacecraft.

"Orbit Fab makes satellites reusable, and SpaceX has made rockets reusable," Faber remarked. In the current environment, operating a rocket firm without aiming toward reusable rockets will lead to a dead end. The same is true for satellites: you're basically launching predetermined trash into space if you can't make your satellites reusable.